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Democratic equality and the problem of persistent minorities
Abstract
L'A. se propose de reconcilier les deux affirmations apparemment contradictoires selon lequelles l'egalite democratique est intrinsequement juste et l'existence de minorites persistantes profondement injuste. la cle de cette reconciliation reside dans le fait que le critere d'egalite est different selon l'un et l'autre cas: il s'agit d'une part de l'egalite des ressources et, d'autr part, d'une egale distribution de la satisfaction des interets
... In this article, we claim that this dissatisfaction is rooted in a position of losers of representative democracy, which we could describe as being in a situation of 'persistent minority' within the democratic system (Abizadeh 2021;Christiano 1994). It is well established that being on the losers' side of representative democracy is associated with a lower degree of political satisfaction (Anderson et al. 2005) and leads to being more open to various forms of institutional change that challenge the purely representative logic (Bowler and Donovan 2019;Bowler, Donovan, and Karp 2007;Ceka and Magalhaes 2020;Smith, Tolbert, and Keller 2010). ...
... In particular, we believe, like Kriesi (2020, 246), that democratic dissatisfaction is rooted in deficits of political representation and that a key driver of political dissatisfaction is being a loser of representative democracy. This idea also relates to the concept of a 'permanent (or persistent) minority' as coined by political theorists (Abizadeh 2021;Christiano 1994): in a democracy, there are individuals who never can influence political decisions due to their social and demographic characteristics, ideological preferences, or political choices. We develop a similar argument and examine whether citizens in a position of permanent minority are indeed more likely to be dissatisfied with representative policies and supportive of DMPs. ...
The literature on deliberative mini-publics (DMPs) establishes a link between political dissatisfaction and support for DMPs. However, little is known about the sources of political dissatisfaction that trigger this support. Our research tackles this specific question and claims that citizen dissatisfaction is rooted in a position of ‘losers of representative democracy’, which leads citizens to be more open to reforms that move away from the representative model. Building on the literature on loser's consent, we focus on the effect of voting for a party not associated with the government and of descriptive and substantive (under)-representation in support of DMPs. We rely on a comparative survey conducted across fifteen Western European countries. Supporters of opposition parties and those who are badly represented, both descriptively and substantively, are more supportive of DMPs. These findings have important implications for understanding the public appeal for deliberative democracy instruments.
... I will also not base my present argument on "communitarian" or "republican" versions of normative political philosophy (Scharpf 2012). Instead, I will turn to a strictly individualistic or "liberal" version of axiomatic democratic theory which bypasses these issues and to an author who has explicated a deductive justification of straightforward majority rule derived from normatively undisputed egalitarian principles (Christiano 1996). ...
... Any super-majoritarian rules or institutions would favor some preferences over others -generally, the defenders of the status quo over the promoters of change. But the two principles justifying simple majority rule come into conflict with each other when they are applied in real-world constellations where the specific preferences of "persistent minorities" would never have a chance to influence the outcomes (Christiano 1994(Christiano , 2010Ganghof 2005: 758-759). Under these conditions -Christiano refers to the situation of Catholics in Northern Ireland as an illustration -egalitarian democratic theory must allow for the possibility of super-majoritarian correctives. ...
From a social-market perspective, European integration has reduced the capacity of democratic politics to deal with the challenges of global capitalism, and it has contributed to rising social inequality. The article summarises the institutional asymmetries which have done most to constrain democratic political choices and to shift the balance between capital, labour and the state: the priority of negative over positive integration and of monetary integration over political and social integration. It will then explain why efforts to democratise European politics will not be able to overcome these asymmetries and why politically feasible reforms will not be able to remove them. On the speculative assumption that the aftermath of a deep crisis might indeed create the window of opportunity for a political re-foundation of European integration, the concluding section will outline institutional ground rules that might facilitate democratic political action at both European and national levels.
... Zumindest eine Antwortskizze in zwei Teilen soll hier aber abschließend gegeben werden. Der erste Teil lehnt sich wiederum an Christiano (1994) an und basiert auf folgender Erkenntnis: Was aus dem demokratischen Grundprinzip der gleichen Berücksichtigung von Interessen institutionell folgt, hängt auch von den gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen ab. In vielen Ländern und bei vielen Themen ist es unmöglich und unnötig, die Art von Vergleichen anzustellen, die notwendig wäre, um eine gleiche Befriedigung der Interessen unterschiedlicher Gruppen zu erreichen. ...
Politische Gleichheit und echte Mehrheitsdemokratie * Erscheint in: Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft 3/2005 Der Artikel verteidigt das normative Ideal der echten Mehrheitsdemokratie als Ausdruck der politischen Gleichheit zwischen Bürgern. Der institutionelle Kern dieses Ideals besteht in der Kombination von elektoralem Proporzprinzip und legislativem Mehrheitsprinzip. Der verbreitete Mangel an Wertschätzung für dieses Ideal basiert zu einem großen Teil auf einem Mangel an analytischer Unterscheidung. Dieser Artikel erläutert zentrale analytische Unterscheidungen, die in der normativen Diskussion über die Institutionen der Demokratie, insbesondere der parlamentarischen Demokratie, beachtet werden sollten. Die Bedeutung einer differenzierteren Analyse wird am Beispiel der aktuellen Debatte über Demokratiereform in Deutschland verdeutlicht.
This article contributes to the study of adaptation aspects of ethnic Chinese in Eastern Indonesia today by emphasizing the long history of the existence dynamics of this ethnic group through the affirmation of its identity and the acceleration of its trans‐local relations. This article investigates the strategies of the Chinese‐Manadonese diaspora in terms of socio‐cultural, business and political aspects. This study uses qualitative‐interpretive methods with two methods of data collection: publications and field excavations, such as observation and interviews, with participants from several Chinese Manadonese. This study found that ethnic Chinese, in their adaptation mission, use economic expansion efforts, maintain their Chinese names based on their sub‐ethnicity, establish educational foundations and form internal cross‐ethnic networking communities and involvement in government politics. This study argues that the adaptation mission of ethnic minorities starts from economic expansion, strengthening identity and seeking asylum in government politics in their diaspora countries.
This study comparatively examined how governments of national unity (GNUs) in Liberia (2003), Kenya (2008), and Zimbabwe (2009) served as an institutional engineering mechanism for political stability, inclusion, and socio-economic and human development (SEHD) in sub-Saharan Africa. It was conducted under the auspices of consociational theory and the liberal institutional reform approach to peacebuilding. The main research question of this study was: Are GNUs a necessary political solution to facilitate political stability, as well as to facilitate post-conflict cooperative governance or coalitions for the advancement of economic development and human security as set out in Africa’s Agenda 2063? The study found that political stability measured in terms of peacefulness, rule of law, political inclusion, and political freedom indicators improved during GNU power sharing in two sampled GNU cases. Some SEHD indicators in the post-GNU segment also improved compared to the pre-GNU period. The study observed that capability of GNU power sharing to improve political stability and SEHD was more in cases that had more favourable contextual factors and adhered to more key conceptual principles of consociationalism in a power-sharing framework. External pressures
and guarantees were very useful in creating the sticks and carrots needed to create a successful GNU in all cases. The study contributes to liberal institutional reform approach to peacebuilding by redefining political stability to include indicators such as the rule of law, respect for human rights and SEHD in addition to the cessation of hostilities as key result areas to be assessed in evaluating the successes of GNUs. To consociational theory, the study contributed by developing analytical frames that can be used to collect and create public datasets on GNUs and conceptualise peacebuilding interventions in a manner that emphasises sustainable development goals. This study argues that the cessation of hostilities after GNUs can only mean sustainable political stability when accompanied by the institutionalisation of strong rule of law, respect for human rights and addressing socio-economic triggers of political instability. The conclusion that the inclusion of more conceptual tenets of consociational power sharing in GNUs increases political stability and SEHD in a post-conflict era is of primary interest to institutional designers in divided societies and regional and international peace and development players.
Keywords: Government of national unity, Power sharing, Socio-economic and human
development, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Liberia
This work offers a new democratic case for federalism, understood as a form of governance in which multiple entities in a country possess final decision-making authority (viz., can make decisions free from others substituting their decisions, issuing fines, etc.) over at least one subject (e.g., immigration, defense). It argues that leading solutions to the democratic boundary problem provide overlapping arguments for federalism. The underlying logic and many details of the most commonly cited solutions focused on those relevantly affected by and subject to decisions each support three distinct arguments (focused on voteshares, other forms of democratic influence, and persistent minorities) for multiple demoi possessing authority in a polity. Federalism is the best available method for recognizing the distinct demoi. This not only supports federal governance as opposed to unitary governance and subsidiarity. It also suggests that democracy and federalism are importantly related and have several implications for institutional design.
I argue that the consensus view that one must never level down to equality gives rise to a dilemma. This dilemma is best understood by examining two parallel cases of leveling down: one drawn from the economic domain, the other from the political. In the economic case, both egalitarians and non-egalitarians have resisted the idea of leveling down wages to equality. With no incentives for some people to work hard social productivity will likely decline, further lowering people's wages and thus leaving everybody all-things-considered worse off as a result—hence “never level down.” On the other hand, however, the argument against leveling down does not appear to pass muster in the political sphere: denying political equality in the form of “one person, one vote” (OPOV), for example, by giving a higher share of voting power to people with, say, more education seems straightforwardly objectionable, even if such a voting scheme would improve the outcomes of all people, including those who are ultimately left with fewer votes. Thus, a fundamental tension arises: we can either endorse the widely-affirmed “never-level-down” thesis, which says that sacrificing people's well-being exclusively for the sake of promoting equality can never be the right thing to do, or we can endorse the principle of “one person, one vote.” But we cannot do both. I defend this dilemma against a view I call the compatibility view: roughly, that because OPOV is strictly necessary to advance some weighty, non-egalitarian interest people have, accepting OPOV as a principle of justice is compatible with one's rejection of leveling down.
The majoritarian conception of democracy implies that counter-majoritarian institutions such as federalism—and even representative institutions—are derogations from democracy. The majoritarian conception is mistaken for two reasons. First, it is incoherent: majoritarianism ultimately stands against one of democracy’s core normative commitments—namely, political equality. Second, majoritarianism is premised on a mistaken view of power, which fails to account for the power of numbers and thereby fails to explain the inequality faced by members of persistent minorities. Although strict majority rule serves the democratic values of political agency and equality as interpreted by a set of formal conditions, an adequate conception of power shows why in real-world conditions formal-procedural inequalities, instantiated by counter-majoritarian institutions such as federalism, are sometimes required to serve democratic equality.
Unter dem Stichwort der Polarisierung wird zurzeit die Sorge artikuliert, dass die westlichen Demokratien an inneren Spannungen zu zerbrechen drohen. 1 Aber ist es tatsächlich so, dass zunehmende Distanz zwischen den politischen Lagern die Demokratie zwangsläufig beschädigt oder gar ihre Existenz gefährdet? Um dies zu beurteilen bedarf es eines differenzierten Blicks auf Polarisierungsphänomene und normativer Maßstäbe, die der unhintergehbaren Pluralität moderner Gesellschaften angemessen sind.
Conflicting claims about culture are a familiar refrain of political life in the contemporary world. On one side, majorities seek to fashion the state in their own image, while on the other, cultural minorities press for greater recognition and accommodation. Theories of liberal democracy are at odds about the merits of these competing claims. Multicultural liberals hold that particular minority rights are a requirement of justice conceived of in a broadly liberal fashion. Critics, in turn, have questioned the motivations, coherence, and normative validity of such defenses of multiculturalism. In Equal Recognition, Alan Patten reasserts the case in favor of liberal multiculturalism by developing a new ethical defense of minority rights. Patten seeks to restate the case for liberal multiculturalism in a form that is responsive to the major concerns of critics. He describes a new, nonessentialist account of culture, and he rehabilitates and reconceptualizes the idea of liberal neutrality and uses this idea to develop a distinctive normative argument for minority rights. The book elaborates and applies its core theoretical framework by exploring several important contexts in which minority rights have been considered, including debates about language rights, secession, and immigrant integration. Demonstrating that traditional, nonmulticultural versions of liberalism are unsatisfactory, Equal Recognition will engage readers interested in connections among liberal democracy, nationalism, and current multicultural issues.
European policies imposed in the euro crisis have disabled democratic policy choices at the national level, while the present European euro-rescuing regime lacks democratic legitimacy. But policy choices might now become politicised in the Europe-wide competition of partisan candidates for the Presidency of the European Commission. In that case, voters might indeed be mobilised for or against radically opposed policy options — the continuation of the present austerity regime and the move to a transfer union. The risk is, however, that the escalation of transnational conflict might further divide rather than democratise Europe.
Title III of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act requires all states to establish a system of local emergency planning committees to gather data on the hazardous materials used by local manufacturers and make that information available to inquiring citizens. However, Title III does not specify how proactive states must be in disseminating information on industrial toxins, nor does it provide any federal funds for such programs. Consequently, there is tremendous variation in how individual states have responded to Title III. An unresolved empirical issue is whether states with programs that actively promote public access to information on toxic chemicals are more successful in reducing industrial toxic pollution than states without such programs. Using data from the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory, this study conducts a preliminary analysis of the effectiveness of the right-to-know programs in decreasing industrial toxic releases across the 50 American states. Contrary to the expectations of some pessimists, findings suggest that right-to-know programs reduce industrial toxic pollution without displacing the problem to other states. Copyright 1995 by The Policy Studies Organization.
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